Friday, October 19, 2012

My house rules for Lamentations of the Flame Princess

Referee and Magic book cover.
From LotFP.com
First I want to say that I like Lamentations of the Flame Princess rules. The rules are simple, easy to handle, fast and easy to modify. The rules don't need much modification in my opinion but these are some preferences I generally like in roleplaying games. Biggest modification is how Elven magic works. I thought Elven are too similar to Magic-Users so I wanted to make their magic a little special and different.

Here are the modified rules I currently use.

Exploding Dice
When you roll damage and get highest result of any die roll again and add. So for example with d6 result 6 you roll again for 3, so total damage would be 9.

Natural 1s and 20s
I use LotFP Natural 1s and 20s d30 table for this. OR player can choose with natural 20 to deal 2x damage or with natural 1 inflict 1x damage to self.

Halfling Speed
Each race has same basic movement rate. Halflings are smaller and faster thus if the party is pursued Halflings are the last ones to get attacked, captured or anything else what happens after pursuit. (Idea from here.)

Dying
Character doesn't die at HP 0 but is incapacitated. Character permanently dies when his negative HP reach his Constitution score. Characters with HP 0 or below cannot heal naturally.

More Experience Points
Because killing monsters and opponents is not the goal of LotFP monsters will give 10x experience than normal. The reason is that every player character will most probably die eventually and I like player character advancement. Also if player played really well or character did something really exceptional I reward experience points from that. Usually 50 - 250.

Elven Magic Is Unnatural
Elves don't learn magic from books or studying. Their magical abilities are innane. It's in their blood and souls. Elves cannot learn new spells by researching nor can craft magical items. They can brew potions though.

Elves gain random spells when they reach new levels. Elves can know as many spells as they could normally memorize per day. When Elf gains a level randomly determine what new magical powers he learns as many per level as the difference of memorized spells is per level. If you roll same spell as your Elf character already knows, roll again.

Elves don't need to memorize spells. They can bend reality and cast them by willpower. To successfully cast a spell roll Save versus Magic + attempted spell level. If the save is successful the spell is cast.

If Save versus Magic is failure spell is failed and Elf suffers spell burnout and cannot cast spells before resting. Time needed to rest is 6 hours + attempted spell level.

If Save versus Magic spell die roll is natural 1 roll D30 Random Catastrophic Spell Chart (coming up!).

2 comments:

JackFool said...

"Their magical abilities are innane."

I think you mean *innate*. What you describe sounds pretty cool, and not the least bit inane...

Jack

Unknown said...

Innate! Exactly that word I meant.